


Who Created the Winter Soldier's Arm?

by Timeless_Anarchy



Series: Marvel Headcanons [1]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types, Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Gen, Headcanon, Marvel Universe, Pre-Avengers (2012), Pre-Captain America: The Winter Soldier
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-14
Updated: 2017-09-26
Packaged: 2018-11-14 05:15:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,623
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11201214
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Timeless_Anarchy/pseuds/Timeless_Anarchy
Summary: Who was the creator behind the Soldier's arm? This in-depth Headcanon will explain it all.





	1. The Headcanon

The Soldier’s arm is a thing of beauty; sleek, practical, menacing, and _very_ dangerous.   
The main question everyone has is: _Who made this prosthetic?_ The answer, as shocking as it may seem, is Howard Stark.   
Howard would never had gone rogue to join HYDRA, he was not a traitor nor an idiot, but he was very prideful and that would be his ultimate undoing. 

In the First Avenger, we see Howard debuting his “flying” car, which completely crashes and fails. Anyone would be humiliated, a man like Howard more so. He redeemed himself with his Super Soldier Serum and his success with Steve Rogers.   
But Steve also ‘died’, crashing into the ocean with the Tesseract not long after Bucky fell into the ravine, leaving Howard with another “failed” project, though it worked out better than he could have imagined. 

  
It makes sense that there would be a period of time between the point the Russians find James in the snow and when they attach the arm, after all, they needed to give him a chance to heal his broken bones and abrasions from the fall. 

_**NOTE:** In the Winter Soldier, we see James’ progression from falling to being dragged through the snow, to amputating the rest of his arm, to placing on the metal one, to being placed in cryofreeze. This makes it look like everything was done in quick succession, but that could not plausibly be the case; as Bucky would need time to heal, be beaten down, and the arm actually developed and placed on. It makes sense that, in Bucky’s mind, the process went rather quickly as his mind was still burned and fragmented from all the mind wipes and torture. His damaged brain was filling in the most significant and shocking parts from when James/Bucky was still around and the Soldier wasn’t fully developed. _

It wouldn’t have been hard to get Howard to a HYDRA base. We find out that, in the Winter Soldier, HYDRA was growing inside of SHIELD. Now, SHIELD wasn’t founded in the time of The First Avenger, but Schmidt and HYDRA weren’t idiots. HYDRA is defined as the 'Rogue Nazi Science Divison’, so it’s likely that the leader of the Nazi party wasn’t too happy with the divergence of the best science department. HYDRA couldn’t stay safely in Axis territory unless well hidden, but that would be hard with the war going on and the large-scale operations they were conducting. Instead, HYDRA began its’ infiltrating early and set up Bucky’s operation just inside the Allied borders, posing as a research facility intent on finding ways to make the next super-soldier; and with Howard’s previous success with Captain Rogers, they would want his help. 

We know HYDRA had access to very advanced technology, we see in TFA the potential of Schmidt’s research. He formulates how to contain the power of the tesseract and use it to not only power his creations, but weaponize the energy. The U-boat that the HYDRA spy tried to escape in was said to almost rival the technology Howard Stark had. Why would they need Stark if their own creations nearly rivaled his?   
Howard had more experience working successfully with biological specimens and they needed a scapegoat to fall back on if necessary. What better person than Howard Stark? Even when the man figured out he’d been duped, there was very little chance that he would actually say something and be branded as a terrorist, traitor, etc. 

Posing as an Allied operation, Bucky was passed off as a victim of a dogfight, sustaining his injuries after his plane went down. He was 'diagnosed’ with delusions, paranoia, suicidal tendencies, homicidal tendencies, shell-shock, anxiety, and amnesia; simply to cover up their true motives and the abuse he was suffering at their hands. To control and 'treat’ their patient (James), HYDRA would’ve had to drug him up and employ electroshock to try and lessen the symptoms; though the drugs and electroshock was truly used as part of his conditioning into the Winter Soldier. 

_**NOTE:** Bucky’s delusions and other symptoms while in HYDRA’s 'care’ weren’t fully caused by his fall, they were reactions to what was being done to him inside the compound. The suicidal and homicidal tendencies were the fault of him trying to escape or get out the best way he could; the bruises on his body were the result of beatings, not his own hands. His delusions and paranoia were about spot on, he believed he was a prisoner of war captured by HYDRA and they were out to kill him, but not before torturing him for information or revenge.   
But all of his delusions were naturally blamed on his injuries and trauma he suffered in the 'plane crash’ while he was fighting HYDRA troops. Mental health treatments and understanding sucked back then. _

They contacted Howard, claiming that James was a willing volunteer to the newest super-soldier program and wanted to have a new robotic limb so he can get back out and fight. Of course, James was too drugged out and confused to do anything but consent, his moments of true clarity were filled with him either ranting and raving about HYDRA and how Howard was a traitor or how Howard should build him the prosthesis so they could both escape. At times, James was convinced Howard was captured there with him; other times, James believed Howard was a traitor.   
Of course, Howard wasn’t a traitor, he would never be. His pride blinded him into making the perfect addition to the most efficient weapon. 

In Civil War, we learn that the Winter Soldier was tasked with disposal and retrieval, securing more of the perfected Super Soldier serum while simultaneously taking out it’s creator. 

We see that Howard recognized the Soldier, calling him “Sargent Barnes” before he was killed. Howard must have met Bucky while Steve was still around, but his focus never would have been on the sniper, rather on the super soldier. A substantial length of time has also passed between their meetings and the Soldier’s appearance had already altered tremendously. Face is thicker and scruffy, eyes cold and dead, body beefed up and motions colder and more calculated. There was no trace left of Bucky, not in his eyes or in his personality, the Soldier was a pure weapon in that scene, hardly human. 

But his most prominent feature was the cybernetic arm, though no-one who wasn’t high-level clearance with HYDRA knew that the Soldier for-sure existed and even fewer knew about the legit-ness of the cybernetic limb. Howard for sure wouldn’t know unless he had a hand in the creation, which was ultimately his destruction.


	2. Theory Reply1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is a comprehensive answer to a comment!

_"An interesting take on this that I never considered. When in TWS after Bucky is getting repairs and we see his flashbacks, it always stuck in my mind how he could possibly have seen Dr. Zola in the operating room when Zola was on the train and had been captured at that point. So....if Zola was recruited by SHIELD after the war when would that have been? Natasha mentioned it, but I gathered it wasn't until much later in time, so then where was Bucky during this same timeframe? Every question births another question, and the first time capsule didn't look very modern, which now creates a paradox unto itself. Hmmmm.... I'd like to see more on your theories concerning the Howard Stark connection and the time frame and subsequent Zola connection. Any thoughts about continuing this line of thought?"_

Doing more research regarding your questions, I have realized that my theory on HYDRA posing specifically as an American base was wrong.  
HYDRA had already infiltrated the American science division through Zola's capture.

When Zola was captured, he offered his skills and information for his life. The Americans gratefully used him and, I assume, Zola gained enough of their trust to start working on his own stuff again.  
When I was catching up on his history, I came across this information on the wiki:  
"Using S.H.I.E.L.D.'s resources, Zola continued his experiments on Bucky Barnes with other doctors to turn him into HYDRA's secret weapon/assassin."  
Which just furthered my point about HYDRA posing as SHIELD to create the Winter Soldier and helps explain the time issue.  
Zola was still working during the war, but he was doing a 'double agent' sort of thing. The doctor could have approached Stark with the prospect of turning the war around again, by combining HYDRA's tech as well as Stark's own.  
Obviously, though, he would've been working in HYDRA's favor all along.

Regarding the technology already being developed and looking quite old, we see all this from a drugged and injured James' point of view.  
With all the trauma, conditioning, and drugging the man's gone through, it's to be expected that his own timeline would be quite off. In the Winter Soldier, where we see the memories, we're only catching small snippets of what the Soldier's destroyed brain is trying to piece together from the information he has.  
It is really difficult to piece together a coherent timeline from the Soldier's memories, especially in TWS.

The cryogenic chambers and mind-wiping stations were already formulated, as Schmidt was already experimenting on POW's during WW2.  
The arm would have been formulated during the war, after James and Zola were taken captive. It probably was not after the war, since SHIELD wouldn't have provided doctors and scientists for a project that seemed to be obsolete.

During all this, Bucky was being tortured and drugged in HYDRA's clutches, all under the guise of healing and dealing with the issues he gained from his 'accident'.

I hope this makes sense and helps answer your theories!

**Author's Note:**

> Sorry for the click-bait summary lol


End file.
